


Shatter

by JoAsakura



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Amnesia AU, M/M, Old men being assholes, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-02 23:20:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8687485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: 76 has a number, a mission,  and a hole in his memory shaped just so.





	

He knows two things with relative assuredness.

1) There is a story marked in his flesh

There's a novel written in ink. "Death from Above" - an amateurish tarot card scribed on his left upper arm. The number 76 is tattooed on his inner forearm below it, garish but faded with time and disfigured by a burn that arcs up along his wrist to the soft flesh of his inner elbow. He knows, from a glimpse in the mirror, that number is echoed at the base of his skull, with a barcode. It makes him feel like a piece of produce or a frozen dinner when he thinks too hard about it. On his left ring finger, a date woven into a geometric band loops around in shades of blue and gold (Married. If he tries, really tries, to focus on that, he smells gunpowder and cinnamon).

On the right, the Overwatch symbol in another band, this one made of numbers. He thinks they're dates, but there are so many of them, in small, precise marks. So many it feels like a litany, like something sacred.

A symphony of bullet holes, burns and cuts, all scarred and discoloured, sings down the length of his fair skin from his silvery hair (two deep, jagged scars that slice across his face, one leading to his un-hearing ear, where the burned flesh runs along his throat) to his feet (Most specifically, right pinky toe, missing the last joint. Of all the old injuries, this one frustrates him the most. How the hell does someone just lose part of one toe?)

He takes his name, then, from the 76. He doesn't know what it means, just that it's His Number.

2) He is a soldier. Was a solider.

It's not just the insults his body has borne that makes him think this.

It's the way the pulse rifle comes apart in his hands, and then back together while he watches the news on a tinny, tiny screen. It's the way he dances in a fight -brutal, efficient.

He sees it in his eyes when he looks at a face that means nothing to him in the mirror. The tension in that faded blue. He's half-blind in one eye (the same side as his dead ear, the glossy burn on his throat and jaw, and he can only wonder what exploded.) He can see it in the set of his mouth. Waiting for the next bomb to drop, the next shot to be fired.

He's guessing, based on his arm, that he was in Overwatch. He knows, abstractly, what Overwatch is. Everyone knows what Overwatch is. Was. The Internet is chock full of conspiracy theories, and a million photos, but he doesn't see his aging, frowning face among them. None of them look familiar, none of their names mean a thing. But he carries their brand and he wonders.

The first raid on an Overwatch depot was something of a mistake. Instinct had led him there, wandering injured and confused in Germany. The guards had been less than eager to talk when he'd dropped in on them, but it hadn't mattered. The fight had been over in a few minutes, and he'd left with a treasure trove: the visor, a gun, some heavy tactical gear and data. The jacket came later, a tacky theft from a bike shop, some cheesy Americana vibe with His Number on the back. He couldn't resist.

The Mission came out of it too. Find out what happened to Overwatch. Maybe, in the process, find out who he'd been.

~~

It's five years later when he's on a rooftop in Chicago, in a fistfight with a man in black who's more smoke than meat.

76 can feel the rivulets of blood running down his side and soaking through his shirt and his pants, hot and sticky-cold all at once. With a roar, the man in black, his face like the ghost of an owl, grabs 76 by the throat and slams him hard into the bricks. His name is Reaper, and all 76 knows for sure is he's a killer.

For a second, the visor jitters and sparks as his vision flashes white from the impact. In the next, metal claws digging through the heavy weave of his shirt, 76 finds himself clawing for breath, for footing as the other lifts him up.

"Let's see who you are." Reaper rasps in a voice rough and liquid all at once, black smoke burning the air around them both. "You've been a pain in our asses for months."

When he rips the visor free, there's a long beat where 76's brain screams at the sudden loss of input, before his optic nerves figure out how to talk to it again. But in that same moment, the other man drops him, and the visor clatters to the rooftop. "Jack?"

76 wheezes, blinking watering eyes as he tries to force air back down his throat past the panic. The pulse rifle was too far away to make a grab for it. "Think.. You got me confused.. With.." He rasps, surprised at his own voice. And then he has that bone-white mask in his face as the smoke itself slams him against the wall again and those claws grab his wrists.

"Don't play!" Reaper roars again and 76 forces his eyes to focus. "JACK HOW ARE YOU ALIVE?"

"Who. The. Hell. Is. Jack." 76 spits out around the blood in his mouth and the other man freezes.

The mask seems to dissolve in front of him, folding into the roiling smoke and 76 finds himself staring into a another scarred face, half-belonging to a corpse and half some sort of chittering monstrosity. He's not afraid, he realises with the sort of shock that says he probably should be, because the dead, red eyes are blinking at him with almost comic intensity.

"I don't know Jack." 76 says with a bitter snort. "And I sure as fuck don't know you." The boot to the face is a hail mary. He's flexible enough to pull it off but he's not sure until it connects that his opponent is distracted enough to be staggered by it. But when his head snaps back and his grip goes momentarily slack, it's enough to break free and roll for the gun.

He's ratcheting the missiles into place when the man in black wheels around, spitting teeth that regrow as fast as they clatter to the rooftop. "January 14, 2052." He says, and it's 76's turn to freeze, because those numbers are etched into the skin of his left ring finger, in a twining band of blue and gold. Reaper's monstrous smile softens fractionally as he holds up his left hand. "I used to have a matching one, you dumb fuck. Of course, you'd walk out of that with your brain all scrambled. It never was your strong suit."

Whatever else Reaper has to say is lost when the rockets blast him through the bricks, a twitching pile of smoke in the rubble. "I told you, I don't know Jack." 76 says, hooking the visor with his foot and flipping it up into his hand.

Later, in the confines of his shabby little hideaway, 76 forces vodka down his battered throat and tries not to think impossible thoughts.

~~~

76 is gone by the time Reaper sorts himself out enough to sit up and laugh hysterically. "Always did like it when you played hard to get, Jack." He says as his body stitches itself back together. "We have so much to catch up on."


End file.
